Gerrymanders, Dummymanders, and Why Panic is Totally Uncalled For

   

Panic is sometimes unavoidable, but it’s almost never useful. Which is why we all have to chill about the gerrymander problem and appreciate the position in which we continue to sit.

From all indications, the coming midterms will be a wave election, where we can expect people to be voting Democratic in overwhelming numbers. And in a wave election, all bets are off. No district will be safe for Republicans, no matter how cynically it’s been molested by gerrymander.

I wasn’t planning to talk about the current orgy of redistricting now taking place in the wake of the odious Callais decision, but then I encountered, in the New York Times, a succession of above-the-fold articles that spiked my blood pressure.

Once again, the Times has fallen back on the tired old Democrats-in-disarray model for its framing, the better to scare the clicks out of their readers. Here is one of the headlines, and they’re all in the same vein:

Democrats Search Desperately for a Response After Virginia Map Is Tossed

‘Desperation’ is an idea repeated often in all these articles. They duly report the obscene developments from SCOTUS and the Virginia Supreme Court, but while there is much talk of desperate Democrats, there is no talk at all of the damage done to two constitutions — one federal, one state.

That’s the story the Times might have written. They might have shown how Republicans couldn’t be clearer about their intentions, how they will happily shove aside the rule of law for any or no reason, and how they’ll put their thumbs on any available scale if that’s what it takes to create a fourteenth-century Christo-fascist theocracy. The Times might have found this worth a mention.

But no. The big story here is Democrats with their hair on fire. Not the tanking of the global economy. Not the catastrophic own-goal in the Middle East. Not the undeniable fact that a malignant narcissist with advancing dementia is driving the country over a cliff at breakneck speed.

And it’s not that these articles contain any obvious inaccuracies. They all adhere to journalistic standards — they’ve been properly sourced and fact-checked — which only serves to underscore the limitations of those standards.

Because the problem, of course, is the slant, which is unmistakable. For the gazillionth time since they first equated Hillary Clinton’s emails with the end of Western civilization, the Times has edited its reporting to make sure the spotlight is on Democrats panicking and Republicans gloating.

Neither describes what is actually happening. Democrats, far from panicking, are sharpening their knives. They’re gaming out tactics that are underhanded and ethically suspect. My favorite of these is the idea being floated that Virginia’s legislature has the power to unilaterally lower the retirement age of state Supreme Court justices, thereby necessitating replacement of the entire court. The new court would then re-hear the election case that its predecessors so rudely sabotaged. This is unlikely to happen, but the fact that it’s even on the table is a sign that Democrats are finally willing to fight dirty.

As for Republicans gloating, let them enjoy it while they can. They can’t hide the fact that elected GOP officials are leaving office in droves, having apparently noticed that their joke of a president has become less popular than cancer, and that the death threats are getting old.

Even so, we need to keep the gerrymander thing in perspective. Yes, these court decisions were setbacks. Yes, they were the product of unspeakable corruption and lawlessness. And yes, Republicans will stop at nothing to steal the midterms.

But short of the midterms being outright cancelled — unlikely, but can’t be ruled out — I still can’t see them pulling it off. When the dust settles on all the frantic redistricting being thrown together now in real time, I’m guessing it will put maybe four or five House seats in play, not nearly enough to overcome a wave election. Besides, there is no evidence that any of those seats would be automatic Republican wins. Quite the opposite.

In virtually every local election since Trump took office, most notably in deep red districts, Republicans have been getting creamed in record numbers. Combine that with the avalanche of opinion polls showing just how toxic Trump and his party have become, and we have the makings of an election much like the 2018 midterm, but with a bigger wave.

Consider the emergence of what some now call the “dummymander,” defined as a gerrymander that backfires on the party that creates it. Take, for example, the Texas gerrymander, the one that started the whole mudslide. The redistricting was based on the results of the 2024 election, and it assumed that Trump’s strong showing among Latinos was something durable, as opposed to temporary insanity. But once Trump started deporting their friends and relatives in mind-blowing numbers, and once his tariffs started undermining the farm economies that depend on Latino labor, the redistricting efforts started looking seriously dumb.

Similar dummymanders are likely to be formed, even in Florida, where Ron DiSantis is looking to overrule his own state constitution to draw new districts that presumably favor Republicans. The operative word is, of course, ‘presumably.’ Trump’s own home district turned blue a few weeks ago, and yet DiSantis is forging ahead like a dummy, praying that the blue plague doesn’t spread to the rest of the state.

The Trump brand has turned toxic, and even his own voters are outraged at the sheer scope and grassroots effects of the vandalism. Granted, there’s a floor of roughly 30 percent of the electorate that remains beyond the reach of simple decency, but their numbers are too small to matter in the next election.

Rather, it’s those poor deluded souls calling themselves “Independents” who seem to be newly enraged. Keep in mind, these days an independent is basically a Republican who’d rather not talk about it. But even they are starting to feel the real-world effects of their mindless votes. They’re already hurting, and there is a definite sense that it’s about to get worse. Malaise is in the air.

And it’s not hard to see who’s responsible. No matter how much the Times wants its readers to believe that Trump is a rational statesman with unconventional policy ideas, it’s become increasingly obvious — even among “low-interest,” dumbshit voters — that Trump is out to kill them.

But again, let’s not panic. Yes, the midterms could yet go sideways, and Trump could yet appoint himself dictator for life. But for the last half-century at least, one of the immutable laws of American politics has been that when Democrats turn out, Democrats win.

I see no reason to think these midterms will be any different, no matter how desperate the New York Times wants us to feel.